“While many people see dreams, Only some have courage to follow them”

Here is a story of one such guy, Mr. Ritesh Rangare, who had faced lot of struggles in his startup journey, still not gave up on his dreams. His journey began when he was pursuing B.tech (Civil) from NIT, Calicut Kerala. From the initial years of college life, he was very fond of marketing & internet and thus joined one of the Multi level marketing company in 2nd year. He was earning good bucks with his work but soon his college director came to know about this and he warned Ritesh to either discontinue this work or he will be rusticated from college. Having no other choice, Ritesh decided to quit his work and obediently followed his Director’s order.

Ritesh Rangare, Startup Space Station

But his passion didn’t know any restrictions and soon he resumed whatever he was doing.

He now started spending almost 18 hrs of his day on all Online platforms and earning from them. Unfortunately, College administration noticed it & blocked his account access. But by that time, Ritesh have already made up his mind to pursue his passion and thus made fake ids to carry his work. Though he was earning good amount of money from it, Ritesh wasn’t satisfied and thus started writing a novel.

As he was having little knowledge of English, his friend Harshal came as savior and helped him to complete the novel within 3 months. After the completion of novel, hunting for publisher started. At the same time, Ritesh got a news that his father was suffering from developing brain tumor and his whole focus shifted from publishing a novel towards his family responsibilities. In the span of 1 and half year, his father passed away and Ritesh decided to do a job to support his family financially. With his hard-working and dedicated attitude, he made his place in the panel of the Board of director of the same company he used to do job with.

Suddenly one fine day, he thought to continue his dream of publishing his very first novel “The Evolution of an inglorious moron” and one of the director funded him for that. Within 3 days of publishing, that novel was recognised as best debut and listed under top 10 books of oxford. But Ritesh wants to do something big, something great that can satisfy him, something of his own. So he decided to quit job and started his own business of selling best quality t-shirt under his private label. And that is how “Welento” (his Customised product store) formed.

His friends- Harshal and Ashish understood his dream and passion, and joined him in same. But unfortunately, after some time Harshal wasn’t able to continue with them further and thus left Welento. It was a hard time for all as Harshal was the technical backbone of Welento. But Ritesh decided to give a fresh start and thus Relaunch Welento in bhopal. In just 8 months, they got a huge response from customers and catered around 200 corporate clients by that time and thus expand their retailing globally.

Ritesh decided to not stop here only. He saw the capabilities and opportunities Bhopal people have in themselves and So, with the help of his brother Mr. Rahul Rangare, he made a platform with the name Startup Space Station, to help all the emerging startups of Bhopal. There, startups can share their ideas, get required motivation, find a co-working team or founders and can even tie up with the local investors.

His dream is to establish about twenty well-settled Startups from Bhopal before 2018, and to set an example of national global vision. Recently the team of Startup Space Station under the guidance of Ritesh Rangare organized Startup Mahakumbh 2017 in Bhopal to provide opportunities to all the emerging startups of Madhya Pradesh. It was a huge success as they managed to bring 20+ investors worth of 200 crores, under the one roof through this event for the emerging startups.

Ritesh and his team helped 6 startups including Medicloud365.com and Poogli.com to get their seed funding of INR 4 million by investors as for now. He is also running an NGO- Welento Foundation in Saunsar (chhindwara district), which is fighting against an industrial area for polluting the surrounding village areas.

Whatever Ritesh is doing, is commendable. And we need more people like him to make this startup ecosystem better.

Comments

About Divya Gupta

Divya is a skilled business developer and the conceptual mind behind bold and bright ideas. She has an eye for the smallest detail which defines her work. She can reflect and analyze work like nobody else and never lets the bigger picture escape from sight. Sometimes she says – Let’s do it all over again!